Protospiel report
by Gil Hova
So, I’m back from Protospiel. Here’s what happened.
I brought three games: Pax Robotica, MacGuffin Market, and Grand Guignol.
Pax Robotica was awesome! Players really enjoyed it. The last change I made to it, adding the die, made an enormous difference. Players didn’t find it too random at all, perhaps because they get $5 every time their Bots are blown up, as opposed to $3 if their Bots survive. (The math works, but it’s a little athematic. Hmmm.) I think I’m very close to publishable with this one.
As for MacGuffin Market, hmmm. How can I put this? MacGuffin Market is now a “well, it’s okay” kind of game. I’m very unhappy with where it is, to the point that I’ve decided to shelve the design. I may not ever come back to it; there is simply too much for me to work on right now to worry about a mediocre game.
Now, the third game. I suppose you want to hear about it. Very well. It’s called Grand Guignol, and it’s a drafting game. I’m setting it in the legendary French horror theater, which should give the design some bite. In the game, players roll dice to determine how shocking your plays can be. If your plays are just shocking enough, you receive Faint Tokens. If you ignore the Shock Threshold, that might work also; there’s a bonus for most shocking production, regardless of the Shock Threshold. At the end of the game, the player with the most Faint Tokens wins.
Grand Guignol was played by other people for the first time at Protospiel. Players seemed to enjoy it, although it’s still very, very raw. I’m looking forward to seeing how this one develops.
I wish I’d gotten in on the Grand Guignol game. That’s a great theme!
Thanks Brett! I hope the gameplay will eventually live up to its theme. I have a habit of coming up with nice themes for lousy games.
Haha. Well, themes are always the easy part, in my book. It’s the game that’s toughest for me.
I always thought the auction mechanism you took out of Pax Robotica and put in MacGuffin Market left you with a more ordinary resource management game and an auction mechanism trying to build a game around it. I can’t remember why you said you took it out of Pax Robotica.
You missed a great NYCBGDPTG meeting. 13 people, 3 tables at once, 9 really amazing prototypes, and free food!
Now, Mark, when you talk about “a more ordinary resource game,” are you talking about MacGuffin or Pax? I’d agree with you about it with MacGuffin, but not Pax.
I took the auction out of Pax because it wasn’t thematic. It got in the way of Bot mayhem. That’s why I’m happy with where the game is now. It FEELS like it’s about fighting robots.
I wish I could have been at that meeting! I needed to clone myself twice, once to go to the meeting, and once to attend Dexcon.
As far as NYCBGDPTG is concerned, man, do we need a new name or what? “NYCBGDPTG” is the sound I make when I spit out my toothpaste every morning.
I was wondering if you could test out a game ive been workin on for about 4 months, its still i its earliest stages, but i THINK its playable…
Tell you what. Perhaps you can ship it to me, and I can bring it out at the next NYCBGDPTG meeting. (That’s New York City Board Game Designers’ Playtest Group).
Email me at gilhova at gmail, and we’ll work something out.
Whoops, wrong email addy. Try gil at hova dot net.